MAKING DESERTS TO BLOSSOM

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17902, 6 April 1920, Page 9

MAKING DESERTS TO BLOSSOM

WOKK OF BRITISH ARMY IN MESOPOTAMIA. I "If war ha* devastated much of Europe it has undoubtedly re-created Mesopotamia,' ■aya the Manchester GuaixLian. "The British army has there carried out for ifas own purposes such a programme of public works as has no parallel in thai anoiont land since one of its first conquerors, Alexander the Great, started the •ciflntino irrigation system on which its prosperity depends. Adequate and Permanent roads have- been made, linking Basra with Bagdad and beyond. Through the desert lands that fringe the Euphrates a railway rtma that ha* given new life to the country. Sanitation, town-planning, bridging, and building have been carried on apace. Above all, the canalisation and damming of the great rivers that give lifo blood to the land have been done with an energy of whioh the Turks were incapable. The British army has thus left a rioh legacy for the new Arab State. Y 'Wbo is to bear the cost,? A report just issued tries, with admirable fairness, to separate, in the list of new publif. worte. those whioh should be a charge on Imperial army funds from those which should be charged as a debt to local resources. The amount suggested as a fair obarge on +ho revenues of the new State is some two millions, and it is in respect of irrigation works, roads, bridges, and the like. But the canalisation and fertilising that made possible the feeding of out armies on the spot instead of with imported grain which would have employed transport badly needed for other uses was a necessary military measure; so, too, was the construction of roads, railways, and bridges; and it is difficult to discover a principle on whidh any moiefcv of these costs can be debited to the nerw State, greatly though it will benefit by the whole expenditure. "Is the sum worth haggling about? "Would it not be more dignified and also more expedient to make to the new nation, for whose Government we shall hold the mandate, a present of the public works we have constructed in the securing of its freedom, rather than toseek to exact from it an insignificant portion of the costs of our campaign?" . .'■